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ALMS finishes tumultuous season: Year in review 2012

The 2012 American Le Mans Series season was bracketed by big news, coming very early and very late in the year. The big news upfront occurred well before the season began, when Peugeot, winner of the Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring in 2010 and 2011, announced it would not return to defend its title in 2012, at Sebring or anywhere else.

The big news at the end of the season was that there would be no independent American Le Mans Series after 2013.

The first announcement was a stunner, since Peugeot's equipment was already on the ground for a preseason test at Sebring, and drivers were already en route to the Florida circuit. Peugeot had been the only manufacturer who had really taken the fight to the dominant Audis, so Audi, to no one's surprise, won the 2012 race at Sebring, with drivers Tom Kristensen, Allan McNish and Rinaldo Capello.

Peugeot's exit was a bitter pill for global sports-car racing and made Sebring seem less compelling, though there was a lot of good racing throughout the various classes. The announcement that the FIA World Endurance Championship would not be a part of the ALMS season-ending Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta was also a blow, effectively reducing the importance of the ALMS as a global series.

That said, the ALMS, unbowed, pushed ahead and ended up with a competitive season that was admittedly short on cars and drama in some classes, but quite compelling in others.

The late-season big news, of course, was the announcement that the ALMS will merge with the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series, though they will continue to run separate schedules until the 2014 season-opening Rolex 24 at Day-tona. When 2014 arrives, the new combined series will likely feature a 12-race schedule. This leaves 2013 as something of a lame-duck season for both entities, and Grand-Am and the ALMS are working to decide what classes from each will be retained or eliminated. We've been promised that list by the end of 2012.

While the combining of the two series is a merger, you can't overlook the fact that Grand-Am parent NASCAR has four seats on the board of the new series while ALMS has two. Also, remaining ALMS employees—the series said there will be no layoffs, but ALMS public relations head Jamie Kimbrough was let go shortly after Petit Le Mans—are now officially NASCAR employees.

The 2012 ALMS season also saw the series backing away from its highly touted but probably premature decision to cut back on live TV broadcasts, replacing them with live online coverage that, unfortunately, was not available to everyone with an Internet connection. There is little doubt that online viewing will eventually be a big part of the future for live motorsports, but the ALMS learned the hard way that this was not the time to make it harder for casual fans to find sports-car racing. There was more live TV in 2012 than in 2011, and there will be still more in 2013. In 2014, expect the combined series to have all its races aired live on TV.

All that aside, how was the racing?

Pretty good for the most part. The 10-race season could have used one or two more prominent venues, but the year overall had to be judged a success.

It began, as always, at Sebring, with a 64-car field. Audi took first and second overall in the LMP1 class, with third and fourth going to Honda LMP2 teams. The Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing BMW squad of Joey Hand, Dirk Müller and Jonathan Summerton took the GT victory, followed by a Corvette and a Ferrari, demonstrating the class parity seen all year long.

The entry list dropped to a still-healthy 33 cars at Long Beach, in the proportions that would characterize the rest of the season: three LMP1 entries, four in LMP2, 12 in GT, eight in the LMP Challenge spec-class and six in the all-Porsche GT Challenge class.

Fast-forward to Petit Le Mans to end the year, and we saw 42 cars spread over too many classes: LMP1, LMP2, GT, GTC, GTE-Am, LMPC and UNC -- as in “unclassified,” for the innovative DeltaWing, which finished a startling fifth overall and has been approved to race next season (probably in LMP1 and probably not at Sebring, unless circumstances change). Rebellion Racing won Petit with its backup Lola B12/60-Toyota (leading the European team to decide to enter the full ALMS season in 2013), followed by a pair of Level 5 Motorsports LMP2 Hondas. The new factory Dodge Viper two-car GT team was fast but unreliable, but that should be remedied for 2013.

Alex Job Racing's Lotus GT team struggled all season but showed promise by the end of the year. Those cars, plus Aston Martin's just-announced programs for 2013 with previous Porsche loyalist the Racers Group, should make it an interesting year.

As far as the championships, Corvette Racing wrapped up the GT title before Petit, which was good because Ferrari won the race and served notice that it will be even stronger in 2013. Second in the standings was the Rahal BMW team, with Extreme Speed Motorsports' Ferrari in third. Driver champs were Corvette's Oliver Gavin and Tommy Milner.

In GTC, the Alex Job Porsche with Cooper MacNeil and Leh Keen took the title. CORE Autosport won in LMPC at Petit, and driver Alex Popow had already taken the title, as well as the overall “rookie of the year” honors.

In LMP1, the slim field still required the last race to decide the title, which went to the Muscle Milk Pickett Racing team Honda with Klaus Graf and Lucas Luhr driving. They edged out Dyson Racing's Lola-Mazda drivers Guy Smith and Chris Dyson. In LMP2, Scott Tuck-er's Level 5 team took the crown over Conquest Endurance. Tucker shared the driver's title with Christophe Bouchut.

The 2013 season will be a complicated one for the ALMS; it needs to build toward the future, and it needs to try to keep teams and drivers that may be forced out of the sport in the fold. It also must maintain the best relationship possible with tracks that may not be included on the combined series' 2014 calendar. Whether the racing will be an afterthought to all the drama remains unknown, but drama is something the ALMS and its teams are used to by now.